Homefront. Part 11

Chapter Sixteen.

Broker awoke, alert and rested after seven hours on the couch. He reached into the back of the couch cushions, retrieved the shotgun, and unloaded it. He listening carefully for Nina, who was in the kitchen and had been since 4:00 after seven hours on the couch. He reached into the back of the couch cushions, retrieved the shotgun, and unloaded it. He listening carefully for Nina, who was in the kitchen and had been since 4:00 P P.M., after a few fitful hours of sleep. He quickly raised the wall quilt, opened the locker with the key around his neck, and replaced the gun and sh.e.l.ls. Locked it up and lowered the quilt.

Then he took a quick shower and checked himself in the bathroom as he shaved. Last night's events still glowed in his eyes. Calling for revenge.

But you won't do anything dumb. You'll call Harry, talk it through. Not go rip Klumpe's fat throat out. Agreed? Agreed.

Okay. Because of the readmission conference, he woke Kit at eight, an hour later than usual for a school morning, bringing her a short gla.s.s of orange juice and a Sesame Street multivitamin, which he placed on the shelf next to her bed. Then he raised the blinds on her small room's one window. No help there, just gray overcast. Nina would have another bad day. He turned back to the bed, grabbed Kit's toes under the covers, and wiggled them.

"C'mon, get up. Daylight in the swamp."

Kit emerged from a tangle of covers and quilts, stretched, flexed her hand, and studied the stiff scab forming on her skinned knuckles. After she drank the gla.s.s of juice Broker held out to her and took her vitamin, she stared straight ahead, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Aware that Broker was watching her especially closely this morning, she said in a stoic voice: "You didn't find Bunny, did you?"

"Not yet." He pictured the toy standing lonely vigil out on the ski trail.

"Did Ditech come home?"

Broker shook his head.

Kit wrinkled her forehead. "She's dead, isn't she? She got in the woods, and some critter ate her."

"We don't know that, not for sure," Broker said. The bunny and the cat. Sounded like a kid's book. Maybe the first real lies he'd ever told his daughter. Two small utilitarian lies.

Kit studied her father. "Where do we go when we die?"

Broker came back glib. "Us, or cats?"

"I mean, when I die, will I get to see Ditech again?"

Blindsided by eight-year-old early-morning judo, Broker gestured vaguely, slow on the uptake. Too slow.

Kit spoke first. "Dooley says, if you believe in G.o.d and you're saved, you go to heaven, and it's a perfect place where you have the best times of your life all at once. How come he knows that, and you don't?"

Broker proceeded gently in this terrain. "Dooley doesn't know know that, honey; he that, honey; he believes believes that." that."

Kit scooted closer under the covers. "Uh-uh. Dooley is sure. You don't know because you don't believe."

"Well, I believe things that I can prove," Broker said carefully.

"Like?"

Broker looked around, saw a smooth, slightly oblong Lake Superior cobblestone on the dresser. The size of a goose egg. His mother, Irene, had painted it red with white dots and a green sprig, like a strawberry. He reached over, picked it up, and told Kit, "Like...hold out your hand."

Kit raised her palm. Broker placed the stone in her hand.

"Now toss it up. Not too high. Just up."

She flipped it up. It rose about a foot and a half and fell back to the comforter.

"Again," Broker said. "Do it four more times."

The stone went up and down five times. Kit picked it up and looked at it. "So?"

"There are physical laws. Everything in the world obeys them. What goes up comes down."

"So?"

Broker tried to say it a different way. "Well, some people, maybe like Dooley, have faith that the stone will keep going up someday. That it won't come down."

"Maybe you got to throw it harder," Kit said.

"No, it's always going to fall back to earth."

Kit knit her brow, plucked up the stone, and deposited it in Broker's hand. "Maybe G.o.d isn't a rock. What if G.o.d's a bird? A bird won't come down when you throw it in the air."

Before he could respond, Kit let him off the hook by vaulting off the bed and asked, "What's for breakfast?"

Broker blinked several times, not sure he entirely followed what had just happened. "Oatmeal. Now hubba-hubba. You get dressed, and don't forget to comb your hair."

Broker went down the stairs and into the kitchen, which since 4:00 P P.M. had been an insomniac zone of nicotine, coffee, and the War in the Box. "Tanks from the 3rd ID have been pushing up this road all night taking small-arms fire..." "Tanks from the 3rd ID have been pushing up this road all night taking small-arms fire..." Nina stood by the stove making an attempt to blow her cigarette smoke up into the powerful vent fan, watching the drag race to Baghdad. Nina stood by the stove making an attempt to blow her cigarette smoke up into the powerful vent fan, watching the drag race to Baghdad.

Broker cleared the debris from her night watch off the counter, sc.r.a.pped the remains of a sandwich into the garbage-good, at least she was eating.

Her sleep patterns were erratic. Sunny days she had a limited amount of energy and did her exercises. Cloudy days she was a zombie, slept in the afternoon, and walked the kitchen all night, watching cable TV.

He adjusted to her pattern. If she was in the bedroom, he slept on the couch. If she took the couch, he took the bed upstairs. Nights she slept with Kit, he had a choice. Sleeping in the same bed just did not work.

He stacked the plates and gla.s.ses and cups in the sink, wiped down the counter, and launched into his routine. Nina moved off as he measured Quaker Oats and milk into a pan and set them on the stove. From the corner of his eye, he checked her fast.

She stared at the dishes stacked in the sink like they were ancient ruins; not quite sure where to start deciphering the puzzle of their archaeology. She'd lost the ground she'd gained last night "Broker, I..." The thought lost its trajectory and burned up midway across the s.p.a.ce between them. Efficiently, not losing a beat, he put two slices of bread in the toaster. He turned to Nina and asked, "Bad night?"

"Couldn't sleep." Her eyes darted out the windows and fixed on the overcast sky with a look of palpable dread.

He nodded and said nothing as she walked past him, left the kitchen, and went up the stairs. She'd take a shower, try to sleep.

"One eight hundred sandals..." Fast glance at the TV. The tanks had disappeared. A happy couple in bathing suits sprinted joyfully into an emerald surf. Broker took a jar of peanut b.u.t.ter and a plastic honey container from the cupboard. "At Sandals we can please all of the people all of the time..."

He checked the oatmeal, stirred it a few times, then walked to the front of the house and shouted up the stairs, "Five minutes." Then he returned to the kitchen, selected a pear from a bowl on the island, washed it, and sliced it. The toast popped. He checked the oats, turned off the burner, took a wooden tray from the top of the refrigerator, put a bowl on it, shoveled in the oats, sprinkled cinnamon, brown sugar, a pat of b.u.t.ter. Grabbed the remote, turned off the d.a.m.n televison.

Okay.

Peanut b.u.t.ter and honey on the toast. Milk. He a.s.sembled the breakfast on the tray and took it to the living room just as Kit came down the stairs, pulling a comb through the snags in her hair. Best for her to take it in here, away from the lingering cigarette smoke. Broker left Kit with the tray, spooning oatmeal with one hand, pulling the comb through her hair with the other.

"I thought we're going to school late because of the meeting with the princ.i.p.al," Kit said.

"We are, but I gotta drop off the flat tire at the garage."

He stepped into his boots, pulled on a coat, went outside, started the Tundra, cranked up the heater, left it idling. As he walked back to the house, he stopped and scanned the misty gray tree line. The black trunks hanging like roots from the gray fog reminded him of what his dad, a veteran of the Bulge, called Hitler weather.

Then he caught the brown ma.s.s of the garbage truck parked up the road, just sitting there in its own cloud of exhaust. To get a better look, he walked down the drive.

The truck started up, then slowed and stopped in a squeal of brakes next to the garbage bin he'd wheeled down to the road last night. A hydraulic whine. The jointed mechanical arm with the pincer arched over the top of the truck descended and fastened on the bin. Then halfway up, the rack jerked and shook the bin sideways, and the cover swung open.

"Hey!" Broker yelled, breaking into a jog as a week's garbage spewed out along the snow-covered ditch. Then the rack released the bin, and it crashed down on its side.

Gears ground as the truck accelerated, but not fast enough to deny Broker a clear glimpse of Jimmy Klumpe's profile, eyes fixed straight ahead, in the foggy windows as the truck pulled away.

Penny-ante bulls.h.i.t. This time Broker coldly controlled his anger and spent the next couple minutes swearing under his breath as he collected the soggy garbage barehanded and shoved it back in the bin. Then he walked up the drive, got in the truck, drove down, got out, lowered the tailgate, hoisted the heavy bin into the bed next to the flat tire. His conversation with the reasonable man in the bathroom mirror was nowhere in sight.

Well, two can play this silly game.

Broker stopped in town at Luchta's Garage and told Kit not to unfasten her seat belt. Stay put. Then he got out, lifted the tire from the truck bed, and carried it in through the service door. A wiry older man in blue overalls regarded him over a short-stemmed pipe.

"Got a flat, some kind of puncture," Broker said.

The old guy jerked his pipe at a Dodge Ram dually up on the rack. "Can't get to it till afternoon." Then he jabbed the pipe at the wall. "Set it down there."

Broker left the tire and followed the guy into the small office, where the guy scrawled something unreadable on a numbered tagged, handed it to Broker.

The guy studied him. "You're the new guy out at the Hamre place Harry Griffin bought and fixed up."

"Yeah," Broker said.

"Uh-huh, that's Harry's truck I got up on the lift. Tell him I'm still waiting on the part," the old guy said, continuing his inspection. "Be ready this afternoon."

Coming up on the school, Broker turned and eyed Kit in the back seat. "So you just sit up straight and say 'Yes ma'am' and we'll get through this...okay?"

She stared straight ahead as they pulled into the school parking lot. Like an echo of yesterday morning, the playground was filled with kids who, undeterred by the gloomy sky, romped in the snow.

Broker half expected the garbage truck to be parked at the curb. Klumpe in the office, waiting for him. Be cool. Save it up. Don't give him the satisfaction.

No garbage truck and no brown Ford F-150. Okay. Doing his best to look humble, Broker ushered Kit into the school. They went in the office and sat in two of the three chairs that faced the receptionist's counter.

They were five minutes early for the meeting. No sign of the other family. The receptionist nodded, noting their arrival, got up from her chair, knocked on the princ.i.p.al's office, stuck in her head, said something, then returned to her chair.

Broker watched Kit, who had fixed her eyes on the second hand sweeping around the clock on the wall. When the minute hand nudged onto the 12, Mrs. Helseth emerged from her office and summoned them with an open hand, not unkindly: "Mr. Broker, Kit."

They entered the office and took the chairs in front of the desk. Kit sat up straight and stared at the princ.i.p.al. Broker was satisfied that her face was alert and not defiant.

The princ.i.p.al stood behind her desk for twenty seconds, silently observing. Then she said, "Kit, have you had time to think about what happened yesterday?"

"Yes, ma'am. If I get picked on again, I should use words. And, ah, no hitting."

"Good. And that's not a bad idea even if you don't get picked on."

"Yes, ma'am," Kit said.

"Fine. Now we're going to make two changes, one temporary, one permanent. For the rest of the week you'll be staying in during recess. And you'll be moved to a new home base so you and Teddy are in different cla.s.ses."

"Yes, ma'am."

"That's all, Kit. You can go into the office, and Ms. Hatch will help you get settled in. Your dad and I are going to talk a little more."

Kit looked at Broker, who nodded. She stood up, shouldered her book bag. Helseth walked her into the office, conferred with the receptionist briefly, then came back in and closed the door. This time she sat down in the chair next to Broker, the one Kit had been in.

"We'll forgo the usual mediation process in this case, after the scene between Jimmy Klumpe and yourself," she said, staring down at the floor. "Frankly, I don't think it would make any progress. We'll take some extra precautions to minimize flash points between Teddy and Kit." She inhaled and said, "It's probably better to find an informal way to smooth things down outside the school. Between the families." She raised her eyes and looked directly at Broker to see if he got the point.

"I'm not sure..."

"Keith, Sheriff Nygard, he's good at this sort of thing. Maybe you should talk to him."

"Mrs. Helseth, I'm missing some information here. What's so special about this case?" Broker said directly.

"Talk to Keith. That's my best advice."

"Okay, I'll sure think about it." Then Broker thanked Trudi Helseth, shook her hand, and left the office. In the hall he encountered Susan Hatch standing by the front door. She was wearing her coat.

"Kit's settled in to her new home base. I'll keep an eye on her," Susan said.

"Thanks," Broker said. She didn't leave, just stood waiting, so he held the door open for her. They stepped out into the cold. She turned up her collar, c.o.c.ked her head to the side, and asked, "How did the readmission conference go?"

"Not what I expected. Is this what you call a special-needs situation?"

Susan pursed her lips. "Let's walk."

They walked around the side of the building down the shoveled walk and stopped by the Dumpsters, big brown bins with the white cursive type; "Klumpe Sanitation" coming at Broker like another poke in the eye. An aroma of fried food drifted from the school cafeteria and hovered over the more gamy smell above the bins.

Susan turned, squinted seriously, and said, "I saw you and Jimmy Klumpe yesterday, out front."

"And?"

"And I don't know who you are or where you've been, but I'd be real careful rubbing up against our local soap opera if I were you. I'd watch out for Jimmy Klumpe-he's capable of doing something really dumb."

"He already has," Broker said softly.

"There you are. You're in Minnesota Appalachia, Mr. Broker; these people are into clan feuds like the Hatfields and McCoys, except here it's Bodines and Klumpes. You can go from two kids in a fistfight to the emergency room real fast. And this town hasn't got an emergency room."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"People talk. They decided you're a question mark. Like, n.o.body has seen your wife. Kit is an island. People say you don't fit."

"I just got here."

"Yeah? Talk to Harry Griffin about that."